All rural schemes will also get a common accounting format; audit to begin with MGNREGS in 12 states At a time when the government is reeling under a number of corruption cases—several of these following critical reports from the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG)—the ministry of rural development has roped in the statutory auditor to conduct a financial, compliance and performance audit of its schemes. All schemes of the ministries...

-The Economic Times   The Centre's flagship rural employment programme will soon come under the scrutiny of the national auditor, which will look into its implementation in the 12 states that receive the largest share of funds. The Comptroller and Auditor General of India will scrutinise the expenditure and outcome of the public works initiated under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) in these states over the past five...

-The Telegraph   The comptroller and auditor general today began a performance audit of the rural job scheme in 12 states, including Bengal, amid allegations of widespread corruption hobbling India’s largest social sector programme. The idea is to see whether the scheme has indeed secured villagers’ livelihood by providing guaranteed employment, and whether rules have been followed in its implementation. For instance, at least 60 per cent of the expenditure on every project under...

-PTI The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) will now scrutinise all the schemes of Rural Development Ministry and Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation, Union Minister Jairam Ramesh said today. Announcing the decision, Ramesh said the two Ministries annually spend Rs 88,000 crore which is the single largest amount of public expenditure other than Defence and it is very important to have CAG audit in the Ministry schemes for ensuring Accountability and...

The word ‘hunger’ does not appear in the 12th Plan Approach Paper even once, whereas according to the latest Global Hunger Index Report, India continues to be in the category of those nations where hunger is ‘alarming’. What is worse, India is one of the three countries where the hunger index between 1996 and 2011 has gone up from 22.9 to 23.7, while 78 out of the 81 developing countries...